Fox News Hires New Star — Billy Bush Joins as Major Contributor

Fox News Media is adding Billy Bush as a major new contributor. The network said he will appear across its channels and digital platforms, with a first booking on “Jesse Watters Primetime” at 8 p.m. Eastern. Bush is the nephew of former President George H.W. Bush and a first cousin of former President George W. Bush and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Fox News has remained the most-watched cable news network for more than two decades, a streak that continued through 2025 and into 2026 even as the broader cable-news audience shrank. In 2025, a non-election year, it posted its strongest such year on record, averaging about 2.65 million primetime viewers and 1.69 million across the full day.

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That family line is part of why the hire drew notice beyond the entertainment pages. In a statement he said, “I’m excited to join Fox News Media and its loyal audience to share my perspective on the people, ideas and moments shaping today’s culture…. as well as the ones trying to undo it!” He currently hosts the podcast “Hot Mics With Billy Bush.”

From 2019 to 2025 he hosted the syndicated entertainment show “Extra.” Before that he co-hosted the third hour of NBC’s “Today” and spent years at “Access Hollywood.” His NBC chapter ended in 2016 after the release of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Donald Trump made crude comments about women during a conversation with Bush.

Bush left the network after the tape became public. He returned to daily television three years later with “Extra” and kept working in radio and podcasting. His résumé also includes red-carpet coverage of the Golden Globes, Grammys, and Oscars, Olympic work for NBC from 2004 to 2016, and live reporting from the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Fox is using him as a culture voice rather than a political anchor.

Watters : Billy Bush, our brand new Fox News contributor. Congratulations. You know what that means? Now that you work here, Trump might hire you for the cabinet.
You want to be Al czar?

Bush: Is interior available? pic.twitter.com/mP299RuTvz

— StandupSpeakOut🇺🇸 (@StndupSpekup) September 23, 2026

The first assignment on Watters’ primetime show puts him in front of the network’s evening audience immediately. The hire reconnects a well-known entertainment host to a cable news brand that has spent years covering the same cultural fights he said he wants to talk about.

Fox News has remained well ahead of MSNBC (later rebranded MS NOW) at roughly 915,000 primetime and 551,000 total-day viewers, and CNN at about 573,000 and 432,000. Those gaps were large enough that Fox often outdrew its two main rivals combined.

The comparison with CNN and MS NOW is the core of the cable-news story. Fox’s primetime lineup—The Five, Jesse Watters Primetime, Gutfeld!, Hannity, and Special Report—regularly finished as the top cable-news hours, with The Five often above 3 million viewers. CNN and MS NOW stayed in six-figure or low seven-figure territory. By mid-2026, Fox was still first: second-quarter primetime averaged 2.49 million viewers versus 1.06 million for MS NOW and 711,000 for CNN. Total-day figures followed the same pattern, 1.58 million against 655,000 and 496,000.

Success in total viewers has not meant immunity from decline. Several 2026 months showed Fox down year over year, sometimes sharply in the advertiser-valued adults 25-54 demo. June 2026 primetime fell about 19 percent in total viewers and 43 percent in the demo versus June 2025. CNN and MS NOW, starting from much smaller bases, posted some year-over-year gains in the same windows. The post-2024 election hangover, summer sports, and a thinner news cycle all cut into cable news as a category; Fox simply started from a higher peak.

Against broadcast, the picture is more mixed but still unusual for a cable channel. In stretches of 2025 and the summer of 2026, Fox’s weekday primetime average topped NBC and sometimes ABC or CBS. From June through August 2026 it averaged about 2.56 million weekday primetime viewers, ahead of NBC’s 2.5 million, ABC’s 2.3 million, and CBS’s 2 million. That does not make Fox larger than the broadcast evening newscasts in their own slots—World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News still draw bigger single-program audiences—but it does mean a cable news brand is competing with general-entertainment networks in the same hours.

Digital metrics widen the lead beyond linear TV. Comscore figures for 2025 and the first half of 2026 put Fox News Digital first among major news brands in multiplatform views and minutes spent. In the second quarter of 2026 it averaged 178 million multiplatform unique visitors, 4.64 billion views, and 9.75 billion minutes. CNN’s comparable unique-visitor and view totals were far lower and down sharply year over year. YouTube followed the same pattern: Fox News reported 4.5 billion video views in 2025, ahead of MS NOW, CNN, and the broadcast news brands.

Share of the cable-news pie is another measure of concentration. Fox has often held around 60 percent of cable-news viewing in both primetime and total day. That is an unusually high share for a three-network category and helps explain why individual Fox hours can outrate entire rival networks. It also means Fox’s fortunes and the category’s fortunes are tightly linked: when viewers leave cable news, they leave Fox more than they leave a competitor that never had them.

The network’s programming mix is part of the commercial explanation. Daytime news blocks and opinion-heavy primetime have given it both event coverage and habit viewing. Gutfeld! in particular has functioned as a late-night alternative that sometimes beats broadcast late-night shows in total viewers. Competitors have tried format changes, rebrands, and talent moves—MSNBC becoming MS NOW is the most visible—but those shifts have not closed the total-audience gap. Smaller outlets such as NewsNation have grown from a low base without threatening first place.

Demographics remain the weakest part of the Fox story relative to advertisers. Total-viewer leadership is consistent; leadership among adults 25-54 is less so, and CNN has occasionally finished closer or ahead in that demo even while losing badly in raw audience. An older core audience can sustain high totals for years and still look less attractive in upfronts. That is why “success” depends on the metric: households and total viewers favor Fox; the demo that sells ads is a closer, more volatile fight.

The comparison is also not only Fox versus CNN and MS NOW. Broadcast evening news still reaches large linear audiences. Digital-native and newspaper sites such as The New York Times compete on unique visitors and subscription revenue rather than Nielsen primetime. Newsmax and NewsNation siphon some conservative viewers. Fox’s advantage is that it has scaled across linear, digital, and YouTube at the same time those other models have fragmented. Few rivals lead in all three at once.

Taken together, recent years show durable first-place status, not unbroken growth. Fox News won the cable-news ratings race in 2025 and still held it through summer 2026, often by a margin larger than the rest of the field combined, and it extended that lead online. Rivals have had months of relative improvement and Fox has had months of year-over-year loss, especially among younger adults. The commercial result is still a network that is bigger than its cable-news peers, competitive with broadcast in selected windows, and unusually concentrated in a shrinking linear category.